


Sodium Chloride

by setissma



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:58:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9277094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/setissma/pseuds/setissma
Summary: Neal started pacing at a little past nine, when the first of the snowflakes drifted down through the picture window.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't have any actual SHOW spoilers beyond the basic premise, so you're safe if you've only seen an episode or two!
> 
> This has explicit Peter/Elizabeth, textual Peter/Neal, and implied Peter/Neal/El.

Neal started pacing at a little past nine, when the first of the snowflakes drifted down through the picture window. He took a circuit around the dining room table where she was sitting, straightening the edge of a placemat as he went, and then another into the kitchen. He came back with a glass of water that he left on the mantle, untouched. Sat down next to Satchmo, who hadn't even opened his eyes. Got up again, lingering near the banister. El remembered, a little belatedly, that she'd forgotten to dust there.

Peter still hadn't looked up from the case file he was absorbed in. "Why install an alarm system if you're not going to activate it?" he said, flipping back and forth between two pages.

Neal snorted, in the middle of rearranging a shelf of cookbooks. El took it to mean the answer was obvious, but before he could add any scathing commentary, the weather alert went off, drowning out the basketball game Peter had been watching. She flipped to the local news station. _Thirty to forty inches of snow anticipated across the eastern seaboard, transportation delays expected, Philadelphia already canceling all flights._ A few more snowflakes fell behind Peter's shoulders, starting to accumulate on the window sill. Neal went around the table again.

"Honey, you'd better take Neal home," El said, gently. Peter had a tendency to forget the obvious.

"Twenty more minutes," Peter said, obviously distracted, and Neal finally sat down again on the sofa, flipping through a second file.

El pulled on her boots and Peter's coat, getting Satchmo's leash off the hook by the door. She kissed Peter's cheek on her way out the door, with a smile at Neal, and took the long route, down through the park a couple of blocks away that Peter liked to run in. She took her time getting back, since chances were good that Satch wasn't going to get his usual just-before-midnight walk with Peter. El figured the house would be empty when she got back, and made a mental note to remind Peter to pick up some extra batteries on the way home, just in case.

When she got back, they were still in the driveway. The FBI Prius Peter had driven home was at an awkward angle, sticking out a little into the street, and Neal was in the driver's seat, bickering with Peter through the open window as he pushed on the front end. El's experience with twenty-two Midwestern winters told her in a matter of seconds that the situation was hopeless; the falling snow was turning to thick, black slush in the street. A four-wheel drive SUV might have made it, but it was pretty obviously not happening.

"I _realize_ that, Peter," El heard as she got closer to the driveway, significantly more tense than she was used to hearing from Neal. She waved Peter off as Satchmo sniffed around one of the tires, and leaned in the window.

"I think you're sleeping on the couch, sweetheart," she said, watching Neal's whole body tense for a moment. Occasionally, it was easy to think of him as domesticated, the same brand of nice guy that Peter was, but that was a dangerous line of complacency, because Neal was unpredictable, with the kind of wild streak it was a bad idea to share close quarters with.

El stayed put, waiting him out, and Neal finally laughed, shoulders dropping. "Only if you put the red silk sheets on the fold out."

El hit the back of his head through the window, stepping back to let him climb out in one smooth motion, and passed over the leash. "Satch hasn't peed on _every_ light post on the block," she pointed out, an obvious hint, and Neal went off down the street, picking his way around the worst of the slush, talking to the dog about the state of their neighbors' flower boxes. (Unacceptable, even though it was January. In Neal's opinion, they should have switched to evergreen.)

"Thanks," Peter said, a little wryly, looking frustrated and amused at the same time; it was an expression El was familiar with, when it came to Neal. "I don't know what's gotten into him."

El made a noncommittal noise, standing on her toes for a kiss at the front of the car, and wrapped her arms around his neck for a minute. Peter's eyelashes were covered in snowflakes, but El didn't think too much about it; she'd always been more practical than romantic, and mostly, it reminded her that he wasn't wearing a coat.

"Let's do this thing," she said, with a bright grin.

It took them a couple of tries to get the car back up into the driveway, with El pumping the gas and Peter pushing hard, and when they finished, Neal and Satch were still at the other end of the street, taking their time coming back. Peter put a hand over his eyes to watch them, and El thought about Peter bringing him home, four days after they'd moved into the new house, with everything still in boxes because she'd caught the stomach flu from one of the movers. He'd been in a free box in the drugstore parking lot, freezing in the November cold, and Peter had come home with a puppy zipped up inside of his jacket instead of with the cough drops she'd sent him for. El couldn't be mad, because Peter had always been the kind of guy who brought home strays, and Neal – well, Neal was the perfect example. He rearranged their silverware drawer and went through their linen closet, and Peter loved him with the same fierce loyalty he had toward childhood dogs and baseball teams. El couldn't be mad about that, either.

Still, she wasn't entirely defenseless; she scooped a handful of snow off the stoop and hit him dead in the back of the neck, laughing at the outraged noise he made, and dashed off around the car when he went for her, feet skidding in the snow. When Neal finally rounded the corner again, El was on Peter's back, trying to shove another snowball down his stuffy wool sweater, and they were both shrieking with laughter, like being seventeen again.

"I'm glad you're having fun," Neal said, with a put upon sigh, and El had to laugh when Satchmo barked, nearly pulling him off his feet in an attempt to join in. Peter got his impeccably tailored italian jacket with a slush ball, soaking him, and Neal looked startled and outraged for a full minute before he gathered his senses and mounted a full out assault against them, using the car as a defensible position.

When they got inside, El hung up her jacket and Peter started peeling off her wet clothes for her, an old habit. He was half way into a kiss, his hands at the button of her snow-soaked jeans, when Neal started fussing over the dog with a towel. Peter's cheeks went red, and El had to laugh.

"We're going to go change," she told Neal. "There's plenty of hot water if you want to use the downstairs bathroom." She caught him with a smile when he looked up from shrugging out of his coat, hoping the thrill of victory had been enough to pull him out of his own head for a while. "Steal something out of Peter's closet when you're done."

They hadn't talked about it, or at least not explicitly, but El had known for a long time what too much interaction with Neal did to Peter. It wasn't a surprise when he followed her into the bathroom as she turned on the shower, mouth warm against the cold curve of her neck, and she let him finish what he started, pushing off her jeans, pulling her shirt over her head. She should probably have minded a little bit more, but it wasn't one of _those_ situations, the kind with Peter thinking about something else when he was with her and saying the wrong name in the heat of the moment. She wasn't a conduit for Peter's affection, just someone Peter trusted enough to show this to, and El had always appreciated the honesty, even if she knew there was some guilt behind it.

He was pushy and affectionate, crowding her up against the shower wall, and sometimes, El loved him more than she knew how to handle. Peter kissed her neck, her throat, her breasts, water washing down over both of them, and stopped for a long minute, face buried against the curve of her neck, his hands on her waist.

"You think he's okay?" he said, and El laughed, reaching down between them to wrap her hand around his dick, stroking him the rest of the way to hard.

"I think Neal can find the towels, honey," she said, wrapping a foot around his calf to pull him in closer. Peter stepped in, and she leaned in for a kiss as she guided him in close, swallowing the noise he made when she let him slide against her. She rubbed the head of his dick against her clit for a couple of seconds, just playing around, and spread herself open with her other hand, getting him in position to push into her.

" _Ah_ ," Peter said, bottoming out in a series of shallow thrusts, and El stood on her toes.

"Pick me up," she suggested, and Peter did, sliding his hands down to her ass to lift her up against the shower wall, letting El wrap her legs around his waist. Eventually, they were going to have to stop having sex like teenagers, but El hadn't found a good enough reason to give it up. Peter's fast, steady thrusts hit her g-spot every time, making her back arch, and she worked a hand between them to rub her fingers over her clit, letting her head fall back against the tile. Peter kissed over her jaw, chasing some water droplets out of the hollow of her throat with his tongue, and bent his head to bite her nipple, making the particular noise that, with Peter, had always been a tell, although it didn't always point to the same thing.

"I think he'll be fine," El said, honestly, burying her free hand in his hair, and Peter shuddered hard, picking up the pace.

El dug her fingers into his shoulder a couple of minutes later, wrapping her legs tighter around his waist, and Peter kept thrusting through her orgasm, fucking her hard enough that it just kept going, fast waves of pleasure that started somewhere in the pit of El's stomach and ended up leaving her warm all over. He held still, after, letting El rock her hips against him, and she clamped down once around him and felt him come inside her, panting against her neck.

"Thank you," Peter said, after, when El was in the middle of rinsing conditioner out of her hair, trying to soap up her stomach at the same time, and she focused for a couple of seconds, offering him a smile.

"No problem," El said, meaning it. "I love you."

Peter crawled into bed after the shower, dripping all over their duvet, and the only indication that Neal had been and gone again was the fact that the books on El's nightstand were in alphabetical order, straightened in a perfect row.

El pulled on pajamas and went down to check on Neal, quiet on the stairs until she realized the living room light was still on. The pull out bed was made up perfectly, hospital corners on the blankets, and Neal was sitting at the kitchen table in one of Peter's college sweatshirts, reading a coffee table book on interior design with Satchmo asleep under his chair.

"Night, Neal," Elizabeth said, locking the front door, because asking if he'd found everything would be demeaning, and Neal glanced up with a smile, pretending he hadn't noticed her coming down.

"Goodnight, Elizabeth," he said, and went back to his book, turning the page carefully, like the book was something to be treasured rather than a garage sale find that had been left in the trunk of El's car for three months.

El woke up because it was too quiet. The dull, constant noise of the city was gone, replaced by a muted quiet that she remembered from blizzards when she was a kid. The soft hum of the radiator was gone, too, and when El rolled over to see what time it was, the red glow of Peter's alarm clock was missing. Their bedroom was too dark, and it took El a minute to realize that the streetlight outside their window was out too, and she couldn't see any lights across the street. The snow was still coming down, thick flakes that were building up on the trees, and the house was definitely getting colder. Peter's watch read four in the morning, and El realized that Neal probably hadn't come upstairs for a second blanket, because she hadn't heard Satch following him.

She bundled up in Peter's robe and pulled a second duvet out of the chest at the foot of their bed. Satchmo met her at the foot of the stairs, whining a little, and El petted him absently, trying to be quiet before she realized that the bed was still made. Neal was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in Peter's FBI jacket with a cold cup of coffee at his elbow. El realized, a little belatedly, that she'd never seen Neal still before; he stayed in motion even when he was asleep, moving constantly.

"Neal?" she said, putting the blanket down on the sofa bed and pulling out the chair across from him.

He leaned forward in the dark, propping his chin in one hand. "They closed the airports and Grand Central around midnight. The power's been out since two."

El noticed a sheet of paper on the table, propped up against a vase of flowers from a client; it was a sketch Peter had bought for her on a business trip to Vancouver the first year they were married, a still life that wasn't worth anything but that she'd always loved. She wondered why Neal had taken it out of the frame, and then realized that he hadn't. The original was still hanging on the dining room wall, untouched, or at least replaced.

It took El another few seconds to realize why Neal had mentioned airports first, why he'd been pacing all night. El had always found Neal's lack of freedom a little unsettling, but now, she realized she'd had it wrong. Neal had slipped the tracking anklet so many times it was becoming a joke, and he had a thousand escape routes, carefully cultivated favors and well-hidden contacts. With the storm, all of Neal's options were slowly blinking out, and the identities he'd created were becoming useless. Without a plane to charm his way onto, Nick Holden couldn't go anywhere, and neither could Andrew Carter or Nathan Garrett. Even Neal Caffrey was trapped here, stuck on El's couch, away from his perfect penthouse apartment across the city.

Still, El thought, she'd gotten the measure of Neal wrong from the beginning, because for all the options Neal weighed every day, he didn't take them. Neal stayed because he wanted to, out of a sense of loyalty to her husband or a love of complex games or for some other, unfathomable reason, and the sacrifice he made for Peter was in that choice. El had known all along that Neal couldn't be caged, but now, she realized that it was because there was no point; he wasn't going anywhere.

"Planning on catching a train?" she said.

"No," Neal said, finally, sounding almost grudging, and El made a decision.

"You're going to freeze down here," El said, standing up. "Come upstairs to bed with us."

It was too dark for El to make out Neal's face, but she saw him pause, totally still for a long moment.

"Elizabeth?" he said, finally.

"It's a king, honey," Elizabeth replied. "There's plenty of room."

She took the stairs, forcing herself not to look back, and climbed back in beside Peter, who still hadn't stirred. Lying there, El reflected on the fact that it wasn't really a decision she'd planned to make, but if nothing else, it felt like the right one. A minute later, she heard the quick _thump-thump_ of Satchmo on the stairs, and saw Neal's silhouette in the doorway.

"Peter," she murmured, and felt him wake up fast.

"Neal?" he said, voice still thick with sleep and concern, and El slid a hand over his shoulder.

"The power's out," she said. "Neal's going to sleep with us."

There was a long pause, one where El could feel Peter's brain trying to work it out, and she grinned when he finally huffed out a laugh.

"I guess I should find some pants," Peter said, dryly, and she heard Neal laugh softly.

"Or don't bother," Neal suggested, finally crossing the room.

"I think that's on the third date, Neal," El said, laughing, and pulled back the duvet.

Neal climbed over her to settle in between them, taking the warm space where Peter had been, all knees and elbows. El rolled onto her side to readjust the blanket, checking in on Satchmo beside the bed, and when she shifted back, Neal and Peter were watching each other in the dark, faces a few inches apart.

"Peter?" Neal said, finally, loaded with so much doubt that El knew she'd made the right call.

"Yeah," Peter said, quietly, and she thought they might kiss, but they didn't. 

Neal pressed his forehead in against Peter's, breathing hard, and El saw Peter's thumb linger against the inside of Neal's wrist, intimate. He rubbed a slow circle, the same reassuring gesture he used at doctor's appointments and visits to her parents', and leaned in to whisper something against Neal's ear, so quietly she couldn't hear it, even in the absence of any other sound.

El watched the tension drain out of Neal's shoulders, and when Peter pressed a kiss to his temple, it seemed like an afterthought. He smiled at her over Neal's shoulder, reaching out a hand, and El fitted herself behind Neal, tangling her fingers with Peter's.

"I said this was a two for one deal," Peter murmured, with a quick grin in the darkness, and El hadn't thought about it that way, exactly, but Neal's skin was warm against her, and – well. El was only human, and if she was sharing her husband, getting Neal Caffrey out of the deal wasn't exactly intolerable.

"It can be a two for one deal in the morning," she said finally, yawning, and Neal settled in between them, warming up the bed.


End file.
